“Hexe! Put that down!” I croaked, my voice still rough from being throttled. “What are you doing?”
“I have to do this, Tate! Don’t stop me!” he replied, gesturing with the power tool. “The darkness is in my hand—I can feel it—it’s crawling up my arm, creeping into my brain, and spreading through my heart. I can hear it inside my head—it’s whispering to me—it’s telling me things—promising me things—it wants me to hurt you and the baby—I can’t let that happen—I won’t let that happen—!”
As if in response, the gauntleted hand suddenly lunged at his left forearm, as if to knock the saw away. Hexe responded by menacing his right hand with the spinning blade, and it promptly recoiled.
“You were right, Tate!” Hexe exclaimed, his eyes filled with a terrible determination. “I have to get rid of the gauntlet—before it takes me over completely and makes me hurt you and the baby again!”
“Hexe! No! Don’t do it!” I pleaded.
“There’s no other way!” he replied. “The voice is too strong—if I don’t do it now, it’ll be too late!”
“Miss Timmy—? What on earth is going on? Oh. My.”
I turned to see Clarence standing in the open doorway of the studio, dressed in his pajamas and bedroom slippers, his eyes agog at the sight of a naked, crazed Hexe wielding a live power tool. Hexe used the distraction to bring the saw down on his right forearm, just above the Gauntlet of Nydd’s white-gold cuff. There was a sickening crunching sound, followed by an agonized scream as blood sprayed across the floor. I added my screams to Hexe’s own and covered my eyes, unable to bear the sight of the saw blade ripping through unresisting flesh and bone.
The gauntleted hand dropped to the floor with a heavy thud, only to promptly right itself and scuttle away like a silver-clad spider. Scratch gave an angry yowl and pounced on the amputated limb, sinking his fangs deep into the back of the hand, just like a house cat attacking a rat. The fingers of the severed hand wriggled frantically for a few seconds, like the legs of a crab, before finally going limp.
The power saw slipped from Hexe’s grip mere seconds before he collapsed. I knelt beside him, desperately trying to stem the lifeblood spurting from the stump of his right wrist. I felt something drape across my shoulders, and I realized that I had just been covered with a blanket. Suddenly Clarence was there, kneeling beside me with a first-aid kit.
“It’ll be all right, Miss Timmy,” he said reassuringly as he placed a tourniquet fashioned from one of his ties about Hexe’s forearm. “I was an Eagle Scout, in my day—always be prepared.”
“I had to do it. . . . There was no other way . . .” Hexe mumbled, his golden eyes seeming to grow paler with each spurt of blood.
“Hold on, Hexe,” I said, squeezing his remaining hand as hard as I could. “Don’t you dare die on me.”
“Boss—are you in there?” Scratch mewed, butting his head against his master’s bloodied chin. “Can you hear me?”
“I’m still here, old friend,” Hexe replied with a faint smile as he squeezed my hand, his voice sounding frighteningly weak. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“You better not,” I said through the tears streaming down my cheeks. “You’ve got a son to raise, you know.” Suddenly Hexe’s eyelids flickered and his eyes once again rolled back, exposing their whites. “He’s going into shock, Clarence,” I said anxiously.
“You both are,” he replied quietly.
With a start, I realized he was right. The initial burst of adrenaline that had first spurred me to fight, and then kept me on my feet, was finally starting to disappear. I felt like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, watching helplessly as the light from the world above dwindled into nothingness. As my vision telescoped down from gray into black, I thought I could hear the Queen of Hearts shouting somewhere off in the distance: Off with his hand! Off with his hand!
Chapter 26
I woke up to find myself in one of the recovery rooms at Golgotham General, the community hospital that served the city-state’s diverse population. I had been there, once before, when a demon broke my arm. I sat up straight, gasping like a swimmer coming up for air. “The baby . . . ? Hexe . . . ? Are they—?”
“Your baby is fine, Miss Timmy,” Clarence said reassuringly from his post at my bedside. “As for your young gentleman, I would say he’s in amazing spirits for someone who has just chopped off his own hand.”
I looked to where Clarence was pointing and saw Hexe sitting propped up in the hospital bed beside me, talking to his parents. His face was still pale but no longer bloody and the bites and claw marks Scratch dealt him had already disappeared, as if nothing had happened. The same could not be said for his right wrist, which now ended in a gauze-wrapped stump. Upon seeing I was awake, Hexe tossed aside his blankets with his remaining hand and swung his legs out of the bed. He took a couple of steps, only to have his knees buckle. Captain Horn stepped forward, helping to steady him. Hexe flashed his father a brief but grateful smile.
“Thank God you’re alive; I was so afraid I’d lost you,” I sobbed as he wrapped his arms about me.
“Don’t cry, Tate,” he said soothingly, wiping at my tears with his left hand. “Everything’s going to be better now.”
“But your hand—!”
“What’s done is done,” he replied. “Ever since I put on the Gauntlet of Nydd, my mind has been filled with a thick fog. Sometimes I was aware of what was going on, but most of the time it was like I was watching myself in a dream. I could hear horrible, ugly words coming out of my mouth, and at the same time I was wondering ‘why am I saying this to her?’ It broke my heart to see the hurt look on your face, but I still couldn’t stop the words from spilling out. I realize my saying ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t begin to cover everything I’ve done and what I’ve put you through—”
“Of course I forgive you,” I said, cutting him off in midapology. “I knew something was wrong. You would never hurt me or our baby.”
“I had my forensics team go over the gauntlet,” Captain Horn interjected. “Turns out there was a puppetry spell woven into the original enchantment that allowed the spellcaster to exert control over whoever wore the gauntlet. I’ve never seen such an insidious bit of spellwork in all my years of investigation. Do you think this Madam Erys is the person responsible?”
“It has to be her,” Hexe replied. “She’s the one who approached me about the Gauntlet of Nydd and arranged for Moot to do the surgery.”
“I looked into this woman—there’s no evidence of her living either here or the Faubourg, at least under that name. It’s like she simply walked, full grown, from the Outer Dark. The landlord who actually owns the glover’s shop on Shoemaker Lane says she only paid him to rent the storefront for a month or two, and used cash to do it with. As soon as the two of you are clearheaded enough, I’ll send our picture-maker around to do an automatic drawing of the suspect, so my people will have an idea of who to look for.”
“First things first, though,” Lady Syra said firmly. “Once news of Hexe losing his hand begins to spread, both of you are going to need charms and spells for protection. You have plenty of enemies—not all of them Maladanti—who will no doubt make a move against you when they realize you are defenseless.”
“What do you propose we do?” Hexe asked.
“Just leave it to me. I am the Witch Queen, after all.”
After being released from Golgotham General, Hexe and I rode back to Lady Syra’s apartment building in her private coach, driven by the albino centauride Illuminata. The panacea I’d been given at the hospital had healed me, inside and out, but left me feeling like I’d just finished fifty laps in a swimming pool. Suddenly I felt the baby kick. I automatically reached out to place Hexe’s hand on my belly, only to have my fingers close upon thin air.